Microsoft will pay Novell USD 348 million up front, but Novell will return USD 200 million of that amount over five years. The specific numbers came in an a filing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission made by Novell late Tuesday. "The financial commitments Microsoft is making as part of this agreement are significant," company CEO Ron Hovsepian said in a statement. In related news, Microsoft has denied that its patent deal with Novell is in breach of the GPL or will automatically spread Microsoft's patent protection to other Linux distributions.

Is it safe to assume that MS could contribute code to Novell and not have it included in SUSE as the case with e-directory and have it run on to of SUSE such as e-directory and make the license exclusive to Novell. Novell would still be in line with the GPL because the code is not included.

Is that not an option that you would view as acceptable on the behalf of Novell. That option seems to me one that would allow for the continued integrity of Linux as well as a strategic partnership!

That MS will, in effect, create a proprietary Linux by, for example, launching a suit against RedHat which forces them to stop distributing GPL code for reading MS filesystems, and then allowing Novell to include code for reading MS filesystems, whether GPL'ed or not.

That will, in one stroke, create a significant barrier to interoperability between MS and any version of Linux distributed by anyone who isn't, to use a crude description, Microsoft's bitch.

Again as long as Novell is not including the code in Linux and there is from the community no IP infringement code added in Linux then again How is the deal a problem. The MS code would have to run on top as is the case with Groupwise and eDirectory!

Microsoft does not have a leg to stand on as long as the community stays true to innovation and creativity. Opposing this deal often seems like a way for the community to potentially include the code and ask vendors to duke it out vs. being accountable for the code that is included. Again Because Novell does not own the Linux I see nothing wrong with collaborating to have applications run on top of Linux It could be exchange for all I care as long as the Linux remains Linux. I do believe this will be the case